Toll Free Numbers

Consumers are used to being offered 1-800 numbers to dial. Because these phone numbers are toll free for the caller they are appealing to customers. 1-800 numbers are an effective for any remote sales businesses to get people to call them.

Toll free numbers are set up to charge the called party, not the calling party, for the placed call. This added cost of the phone call is offset by the benefits of toll free telephone numbers, especially if the business has some way to directly monetize incoming calls.

Using one or more toll free numbers increases company visibility, and encourages customers to call. This benefit is one of the most obvious returns to establish such a number. Toll free numbers can also increase company efficiency, and there are numerous telephony software solutions that have been designed to help remote sales teams to do this.

One such software solution is a lead management CRM. By linking inbound toll free calls to the CRM, relevant, real time information on the caller will automatically be captured and updated in the CRM’s database. These leads can be saved as future prospects for phone or email campaigns.

Another piece of telephony software that helps sales reps capitalize on toll free numbers is inbound-outbound call blending telephony. With this, sales reps may make outbound calls while they wait to receive an inbound call. The use of a CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) system blending can additionally enhance call blending. These CTI solutions often involve pop-ups or pop-screens, windows that open automatically when the inbound call is answered. This immediately displays all relevant information and allows the sales rep to easy update the contacts data in the CRM.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is another business solution that increases the effectiveness of toll free calls. ACD software is known as call routing software, and it automatically forwards incoming calls to the best available agent. Individual agents can be specified as the primary agent for individual toll free numbers or geographic locations. If preferred agents are not available, incoming calls can then be routed to a designated fail-over destination. This could be the company’s general telephone line, an internal messaging system, or a private cell phone.

The implementation of a toll free number can be the added incentive a potential customer needs to call a business they have not contacted before. These telephony pieces of telephony software gives sales representatives the tools they need to make these calls even more profitable.

What can separate a Remote Sales Professional from a Telemarketer?

rWhat can separate a Remote Sales Professional from a Telemarketer?

Even those of us who work in telephony software can find ourselves annoyed with telemarketers. Perhaps we are even more annoyed with the tactless tactics these sales people use because we see how telesales should be done. We know that there are types of auto dialers that fix many of the “problems” with remote selling by telephone.

Telemarketing originated in the 1950’s, and by the 70’s telemarketing companies were experiencing a tremendous amount of success. By the 1990’s telemarketing was often seen as a public nuisance, and by the end of the decade legislative action was taken with the implementation of the “Do Not Call” registry.

There are several reasons why telemarketers fell out of favor with the American public. These calls were often placed at the least opportune times, right about the time dinner was being served and the family was gathered together. Telesales professionals were often aggressive and refused to respect their contacts wishes not to purchase what they were selling.

On top of this is added the insult of the “telemarketer pause.” This occurs when the telesales company uses a predictive auto dialer. A predictive dialer calls more numbers than available sales agents. It does this based on the amount of dropped calls or busy signals it has been encountering, as well as how much time the sales agents are spending on an average call. Since there is no guarantee that there won’t be more calls answered than there are sales agents to take those calls a percentage of calls trigger a telemarketer pause. This is when there is no agent on the line when the contact answers – the phone is dead.

It is a possibility that such a call will be routed to a sales agent shortly, but in these cases the person called is expected to remain on the line and wait. Most often these contacts simply hang up the phone. With practices like these it is no wonder that we all find ourselves annoyed with these telemarketers.

Responsible remote sales professionals opt for a different kind of auto dialer – a Power Dialer. A power dialer only calls one number at a time for each available sales representative; there is no opportunity for a telemarketer pause to occur. This kind of auto dialer not only satisfies the call center’s need to make more calls but also gives the potential customers being called courtesy that a predictive auto dialer cannot.

It is up to the sales people to deal with the problems of over aggressiveness internally.

3 benefits of using Inbound – Outbound call blending

Many call centers suffer because they completely separate the duties of calling outbound numbers and answering inbound calls. Inbound – outbound call blending is a telephony software solution that increases the productivity of an entire call center by allowing individual sales representatives to handle both inbound and outbound calls.

Sales reps who wish to perform both inbound and outbound calls log into an inbound call receiver and mark themselves as available to take incoming calls. While waiting to receive calls the rep can then log into an outbound initiative in their telephone dialer. By doing so the rep will continually be routed new outbound calls.

When an inbound call is received, inbound – outbound call blending technology routes that call to an available sales rep and disconnects that rep from the outbound dialing initiative (not a call). When the sales rep is finished with that call he is then able to jump right back to making outbound calls.

Screen pop is another type of CTI (computer telephony integration) software that increases the usability of inbound – outbound call blending. CTI screen pop creates a live data link between the sales rep and the company’s CRM for each inbound call. Screen pop detects the caller id of the incoming call and compares that to the CRM database. When a matching entry is found, screen pop opens a new window displaying all of the contact information and history for that phone number. If the incoming call’s caller id does not match an existing entry in the CRM, screen pop opens a blank window instead. The sales rep can record all of the relevant information inside this window which will be saved within the CRM.

This inbound – outbound call blending solution offers the following benefits:

First, businesses stay more productive during down time. By having the same sales representatives take inbound calls while making outbound calls, the amount of inbound calls slows during the work day the sales rep is able to stay just as busy. This creates a significant increase in net calls made and taken per day, per rep.

Second, businesses can spend less on payroll. Since inbound – outbound call blending allows sales reps to take care of both inbound and outbound calls, fewer employees need to be hired to cover both responsibilities.

Third, sales representatives can respond more intelligently to incoming calls. With the uses of CTI screen pop, sales reps are able to have all of the information they need on each incoming call to respond to that lead as effectively as possible.

Contact Managers, what can they do?

Any sales team that sales remotely depends on fresh leads and contacts. A contact manager system keeps all of these leads in order and keeps sales reps selling.

Contact manager systems organize and control all of the tasks and processes associated with creating, contacting, and selling to leads. These systems, which are also called customer relationship managers or CRMs, start their job with lead capturing. A third party lead generation company is certainly one location that a contact manager can upload lead information from. Another productive source of leads is the company website. Contact managers can be programmed to gather information from web forms filled out and submitted on the internet. The information on these web forms are gathered and stored within the CRM and that lead is then qualified based on the information available.

A contact manager system organizes contacts into three separate categories (sometimes referred to as “buckets”). The contacts with in these three categories – leads, prospects, and customers – can have specific tasks assigned to them, or these contacts can be split into smaller groups within their category. Using a CRM a sales representative can interact with a whole group of contacts at once, such as sending them all an identical email or fax message.

Contact managers act as calendars to keep track of meetings or call-back appointments with contacts. Syncing with email systems like Microsoft Outlook and reminding agents of important meetings is only the beginning of what a CRM can accomplish.

Contact managers are the central piece of software that supports many of the other telephony software that allows call centers to function. Power dialers pull lists of leads from the CRM and upload all important data from a call there. Automatic call distribution, or ACD, routes inbound phone calls to the best available agent that is free when the call is received. Contact managers can also be the most reliable basis for business reporting. The real time analytics that a contact manager calculates allows for an accurate interpretation of data to show the underlying trends of the current sales market.

Contact managers also aid sales agents in fulfilling the needs of their contacts. One way that a customer relationship management system does this is with its prewritten email templates and voice messages. These emails or voice messages can be left by the CRM whenever the need arises, stopping the sales agent from wasting calling time in order to send emails to clients and contacts. A contact manager helps with all parts of inside sales.

5 benefits of using CTI Screen Pop with Autodialers for Remote Sales Reps

Screen pop is a useful tool for sales reps that make outbound calls and receive inbound calls.

Screen pop is a form of CTI – computer telephony integration. This refers to any technology that enables a computer and a telephone work together. CTI includes a large number of telephony tools.

Screen pop is a feature of lead management CRMs and telephone dialing systems. Screen pop is especially useful when inbound/outbound call blending is being used.

Inbound/outbound call blending works as follows; first, the sales rep becomes available to receive incoming phone calls. The sales representative then signs in to an outbound autodialer initiative. The autodialer will continue to route new leads for the sales rep to call whenever he is available.

When an inbound call is received by the call center, and the sales rep is between calls, he is automatically marked as unavailable in the outbound autodialer initiative. The inbound call is then routed through to the sales representative.

When this call is routed, CTI screen pop is activated. The screen pop creates a live data link between the company CRM and the incoming call. Key information from the call is immediately captured within the CRM. The caller ID of the incoming call is compared to those stored in the lead management CRM, and the information stored on the incoming call is displayed on screen for the answering sales rep. If there are no records available within the data base a blank screen is displayed. The sales rep can record more contact information and notes on the phone call directly into the screen pop and those changes are saved within the CRM.

There are several important benefits from using CTI screen pop:

1. Sales reps can answer inbound calls knowing much more about those callers. This could include what search engine they visited the company website from and which keyword they had searched for, their company name, their phone number, and more.
2. Sales reps have instant access to prior conversations and the dates and times of those previous calls.
3. Sales reps can immediately capture inbound call data and mark the record for future use.
4. Sales representatives can appropriately response to calls coming from multiple inbound initiatives because of the relevant information presented to him at the start of each call.
5. All information gathered is stored within the lead management CRM’s centralized database, allowing any sales rep to have instant access to all relevant data on any specific caller.

Call Center Auto Dialers

Inside sales is the process of collecting leads, making contacts, and closing sales from a remote location – typically over the telephone. This differs in several ways from outside sales, where sales professionals meet with their prospects face to face. Because it is different inside sales professionals need to utilize sales technologies in order to be the most effective, and compensate for the personal touch. An auto dialer is one such technology that is essential to productive inside sales call centers.

Call centers need to make as many quality calls in a day as they possibly can. A high number of outbound calls also allow call centers to contact individual leads numerous times, if necessary, in order to convert as many customers as possible. Many call centers use ratio auto dialers or predictive auto dialers because of the high level of calls that can be made each day with these solutions.

Ratio and predictive dialers both burn through a large number of leads very quickly because both types of dialers dial more leads than there are available sales agents to take those calls. This is done to account for the number of calls that are not answered or busy. These auto dialers also come with a percentage of dropped calls. For B2B call centers that have a more complex sales process and typically a higher profit on each call, dropped leads are not an option. In this case a power dialer is the only type of auto dialer that should be used.

Power Dialers call only one lead for each sales agent at a time. When a call starts to ring it is routed through to the agent. If the answering machine picks up the auto dialer can be instructed to leave a prerecorded message while the sales agent takes another call. Since these B2B sales are complex and could require a significant amount of time, the power dialer will not begin dialing other leads until the sales agent finishes his call. This solves the problem of burning through leads, dropped calls, and lag time.

Companies using a power dialer can expect to triple their daily call volume compared to manually dialing, but cannot dial the same volume of leads that a company using a ratio or predictive dialer can in a day, which for B2B companies is not necessary. What this kind of auto dialer may lack in shear call volume it more than makes up in its ability to provide each lead with a quality sales experience.

Key features of a Lead Management CRM

A lead management CRM allows sales representatives to effectively use other telephony tools. The CRM is able to triple sales productivity by integrating there numerous telephony software tools into a single, easy to implement, software platform.

The simple interface of a lead management CRM allows sales reps to easily complete their required tasks. Everything a sales representative needs to do can be done within one computer window. From here he can choose to disconnect from the phone dialer, move on to the next call, schedule a call back appointment, view call reports, send an email, and a number of other key tasks.

The technology used by a lead management CRM also helps a sales rep know the best time to contact a web-based inquiry in order to contact, qualify, and close a sale. It uses what is known as web form callback technology to do this. The web form on any website can be programmed to capture the data from the form and transfer it to the CRM. Once in the customer relationship manager, the phone number is immediately routed to a sales rep. The CRM also makes the newly generated and captured lead a high priority for the sales rep to call, ensuring that the call is placed within minutes of the lead submitting information and demonstrating interest. According to a study with Insidesales.com and MIT, when leads are contacted that quickly, the contact rate increases upwards of 800%.

Lead management CRMs add further time saving features with automated voice messaging technology. During the calls when a lead is unable to be contacted, prerecorded messages can be left by the dialer while the sales rep moves on to the next call. Prior to making calls sales representatives can create a whole library of prerecorded voice messages, and have these messages checked for quality control. When a voice mail machine is encountered the sales rep only has to click a button on their screen to have one of those messages left while he moves onto the next sales opportunity. This keeps sales reps talking to live leads, not dealing with machines that can’t make a purchase.

Lead management CRM is a powerful productivity enhancing software solution that is suitable for both B2B and B2C remote sales. Users need very little training before using a CRM for their sales calls, and it has an immediate impact on any remote sales organization.